Most cold emails suck. They fail at achieving anything other than wasting time. But there is a formula you can use.

A formula that generated $1m in business for myself. One that we rolled out to my team of 4 people which made us the, the #1 team in the world at a company of 600. All of these emails are for when I was selling for my former company, Braze.

One where CEOs were telling me how much they appreciated the cold email. See for yourself:

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♥️ Response: CEO of an Ecommerce Company

♥️ Response: Head of Marketing at a Grocery Company

♥️ Response: VP of Marketing at a Tech Company

These are the types of responses you want. You're not immediately booking a meeting, but these people will remember you. They'll mention you to a colleague who might benefit from your service. In the last example, that said they weren't able to explore for another year. Surprise, they ended up becoming a customer two months later.

You'll succeed in selling yourself, first, and any product you sell will follow. My goal is to show you the formula and give you a leg up in adopting it.

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Starting with an Example

Let's get right into it. Here's an example of one of these emails

If it's too small, here's what it says:

Subject: made a (name of my company/name of their company) vid for Lesley

Body: Lesley, Congrats on (news event)! I took some ideas from working with (comparable customers). Made this video on how to keep (company) customers engaged during the free trial to ensure they stay users for the long term. It uses their behaviors in the app to trigger (my company) messages.

[THUMBNAIL THAT LINKS TO A ONE MINUTE VIDEO]

You could set up automated push + email that takes user's behaviors and actions into account. Then personalize the messages they'd get to ensure they're coming back to get coaching. You could use (my company) as a hub to automate super relevant messaging to all of your users.

We'd love to support (company) in the same way we do (comparable customers) and more. Are there any particular marketing/engagement strategies you'd like to achieve? I'll send a 1min demo of how we'd help so you can see if it's worth your time.

♥️ The Response:

Ok, but this email is specific to my company. So let's get to the formula behind it.

Concept: People will respond to emails that show you've done your homework and provide value up front. Making it simple, below a 6th grade reading level, means they're more likely to read it. The less calories someone has to burn to understand us, the more we win. Easy in theory, difficult in reality.

Goal: We want a response. A "Yes" is great, but even a "No" helps us understand if our messaging needs work, or helps us move onto the next target.

Formula for Success:

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😡 Duh, Ryan. I've always been doing that.

You may think you have. I did too, for a long time. And I got the standard 5-10% reply rate. Until I made some major tweaks. Let's look at my email further and then we'll start to apply it to your work.

🛠️ Subject line: made a (company/their company) vid for (first name)

The first thing each recipient will read. It often decides whether you go to spam/trash or if you get read. Oftentimes, people use weak subject lines that are the same as everyone else:

Subject: Quick question Subject: (first name) <> introduction Subject: (my company) // (their company)

Buyers are used to these. They signal "I'm about to sell you something" and then you end up unread. They suck because they don't show any value the recipient gets by opening the email. Tell someone that you made something for them, and you trigger their curiosity. Then, include their company and their name.

It's like handing them a Christmas present that's begging to be opened because it says "This is just for me."

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🛠️ Intro, aka Homework OR Social Proof: Congrats on (news event)! I took some ideas from working with (comparable customers).

Often, showing your social proof or that you've done your homework is enough. In this particular instance, I've done both because I had seen a recent article on them. I didn't go in to detail about the news. I skipped the pleasantries. I got right into what this person might care about. Namely - the ideas I'm giving them from working with their potential competitors.

😩 "But I don't have customers / I'm just starting out" 😩

Ok, but you do have some tie to this person via the work you do. You could say:

"I took some ideas from building for other Martech CEOs." "I took some ideas from watching your competitors like X, Y, and Z" "I took some ideas from going through your entire website"

The point is to show that you're doing your homework in a pithy way and set up the value you're about to drop on them.

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🛠️ Value Part 1: Made this video on how to keep (company) customers engaged during the free trial to ensure they stay users for the long term. It uses their behaviors in the app to trigger (my company) messages.

I went to their website and came up with a hypothesis about what they might want to achieve as a business. For this company, I determined they wanted me to download their app. From there, it's easy to imagine they'd want me to keep using the app. So I'm communicating to this CEO that my video shows how I can contribute to that, tactically.

You can easily do this yourself. Take a look at my website, magicsalesbot.com. What do you think I want you to do? Sign up for my service, pay me money, refer friends, maybe more? How does your service support that?

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🛠️ Value Part 2: This is where "you" come in. This is the part where your personality, curiosity, and desire to partner with this person shines through.

I always send a Loom video. Loom is free, easy, and impactful. I start the video on the prospect's website. I say, effectively, "this is what it looks like you want me to do." Then, I switch tabs to my website. I say, "here's how I can help." All of this takes under 1 minute. Then, I screenshot the thumbnail and paste it into the email, and set the thumbnail to be a link for the video. This is important - it's a visual cue for the reader. They see your face on their website and know this is a personalized email. It prompts them to read the whole thing.

As an example, here's me making a video I'd send to Visualize Value if I wanted to sell them SalesAdvice.io services. I'd make sure that I included the thumbnail that shows their website with my face on it, and link it to the video:

It's not even a fantastic video. But the fact that I'm showing the recipient how I'm doing homework on them, and what specifically I can offer them, resonates deeply. You could do this with anything - someone's Linkedin profile, their Twitter profile, anything to show that you're doing your homework.

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🛠️ Value Part 3: You could set up automated push + email that takes user's behaviors and actions into account. Then personalize the messages they'd get to ensure they're coming back to get coaching. You could use (my company) as a hub to automate super relevant messaging to all of your users.

This is my pitch that I would say in the videos. I wrote it out here because most recipients will read this before watching your video.

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🛠️ Closing: We'd love to support (company) in the same way we do (comparable customers) and more. Are there any particular marketing/engagement strategies you'd like to achieve? I'll send a 1min demo of how we'd help so you can see if it's worth your time.

Many sales people will tell you to close hard and ask for the meeting up front. I'm not against that. So many folks are using that tactic, though, that it's easy to stand out.

We're talking about a partnership here, and how we'd love to support them. We're asking for their pain points so we can get more specific with a video like above. We're asking if there's any more value we can provide, which is a hell of a nice ask to make. Most often, they'll respond and initiate a conversation that leads to a call. See this response for example:

This CEO asks one clarifying question and then asks for a meeting. This is the position you want to be in. You've proven you're a real human, you've proven your expertise by providing value up front, and now people are asking you for meetings.

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🧪 Let's recap our formula

1. Subject line: Show that you made something - a loom video, a pitch deck, anything
2. Intro: Hook them with your relevance in the space and that you've done your homework
3. Value: Show them what you made
4. Close: Ask if you can offer more value

In the next section, you'll see Hemingway App. I cannot recommend this enough. When you follow the above formula and simplify it with a tool like Hemingway, that's where you see real results.

🛠️ Tools to help you

Loom - the free video making software I love

Hemingway app - this took my sales writing to the next level. It helps you make writing simpler and more direct. I experienced most of my benefits when I started taking the "reading level" of Hemingway app seriously, and aimed for a Grade 6 level or below. This entire guide is at a 5th grade reading level.

Magic Sales Bot - If you want to look like you've done your homework and you're selling tech, it helps to know what's going on in their life. Use this to spot opportunities to reach out.